while searching for some nice markings for my B-25 model, I've found decals for currently flying Mitchell "Heavenly Body" of the 42nd BG "Crusaders". The restored Mitchell looks great in this scheme and it's also my favourite version of the plane, with glass nose and a sick amount of MGs pointing forward.
The question is: how much does this look have in common with original WW2 "Heavenly Body"?

I've found only one pic of the original:

the pin-up girl is hardly similar to the one currently flying, being painted in a completely different suit, and not waving a veil(?) with a USAF Star on it. Kits-World decals say in their instruction sheet for "Heavenly Body" that the original was a B-25C, and currently we have a B-25J carrying those markings.

Is there any chance that there were two different (one after another?) "Heavenly Bodies" in the Crusader group, the first one being a B-25C from the picture above and the other one, B-25J, acting as a marking donor for the restored aircraft? Or maybe the restored Mitchell is only loosely inspired by the one from the picture and therefore in fact a fictional marking?

Considering how many Curtiss P-40 versions resembling a Flying Tiger I think the Heavenly Body decal got some major reason to be displayed at any given B-25.
Kermit Weeks og Fantasy of Flight is told to be manic around originality, wich seen the other way round not might be the case for the rest of the aviation-historic-flight branch :-/

First of all, my apologies for responding to an old post. I too am working on a B-25J model and decided to model it after "Heavenly Body", while looking for more details I found this post with the image of the original aircraft (not the current 430748 aircraft flying). The pin-up is quite different from the current restored B-25 and the decals in print. Upon further looking I found that there were many aircraft that flew in WWII which used "Heavenly Body" and some form of pin-up art. A google search pulled easily pulled up a B-24, B-29 and a B-17.

According to the website for "The Armored Angel", the pin-up was inspired by the pin-up artist Albert Vargas and was used on a number of aircraft (B-24 Armored Angle, Heavenly Body, Georgia Peach, Lil' Gypsey & Queen of Hearts) all used a similar image to this one:

The B-24 Armored Angel shows figure similar to the B-25 Heavenly body of a woman without the cape and in a two piece bathing suit:

The B-24 Heavenly Body shows a version which is most similar to the current decal set and B-25 430748's current markings (minus the banner which reads "Heavenly Body".

The B-17 Heavenly Body version is most similar to the current day version used and the B-25 decal set:

I am not sure if the original B-25 Heavenly Body nose art was too bland for the decal makers or if they happened to come across one of the other versions and assumed this would be good enough for the B-25. The current decal set will not be difficult to modify (cutting off the cape and painting a two piece suit) to match the original nose art.

I am already committed to building my 'J' with the Heavenly Body theme and modifying the nose art to match the original. It won't be a 'C', but not much else in the details of the plane can be garnered from the photo. Filip, I am glad you made your post or else I would have used the incorrect version of the pin-up art and that would have bothered me if I already had it set under several layers of clear coat!

Such decorations might not be official decals nor made by official decal makers, but the most artistic guy of the crew who had to get the inspiration from some source and copying it as good as possible.
The Flying Tigers got their inspiration from a pic ture of a RAF Tomahawk from North Africa pictured in a GI magazine and the shark mouths of the AVG Tomahawks shows to be as different as can be. The use of Heavenly Body might be out of the exact same situation!

I received the Kits-World decals which contain both "Heavenly Body" and "Vestal Virgin." The documentation that came with the decals states the following:

"These are two B-25 examples taken from the 1969 movie adaptation 'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller."

It appears that Hollywood stepped in and added their own flourishes the "Heavenly Body" pin-up which was used in the film and subsequently remained the nose-art of today for the current flying aircraft and the available decal-sets. One now has to realize that when building a model of the B-25J "Heavenly Body" it will be a facsimile of the movie version and the current flying aircraft, not the original B-25C of the photo provided by the original poster of this thread.